Warning! Spoilers for Alien #12 ahead!
While Alien’s Xenomorphs are some of the deadliest creatures in all of science fiction, the most terrifying aspect to the cosmically horrific creatures surprisingly has nothing to do with killing. The latest issue of Marvel Comics’ Alien series reveals that the Xenomorphs’ horrifying ability relates to the threat they pose to the universe on a planetary scale.
The Xenomorph species was introduced in the Ridley Scott film Alien where it immediately left a lasting impact on audiences. In the film, the crew of the Nostromo receives a strange distress signal from a seemingly uninhabited world in the further reaches of space, and per company policy, they are obligated to check it out. When they get to the planet they discover a derelict ship that has crash landed on this world. After investigating the inside of the ship, the crew finds that certain chambers within the interior are covered in a black, mucus-like substance with mysterious and ominous eggs lining the floor. This look of a Xenomorph hive, even a dormant one as shown in the first film, has become universal for their species as Xenomorphs have a very specific way of terraforming any environment to fit their needs–something that is immediately established in the Xenomorph’s first appearance and something that still rings true in Alien stories to this day.
Related: Alien’s Ancient Humans Had a Way Better Name for Xenomorphs
In Alien #12 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Salvador Larroca, Xenomorphs have been dropped on a settlement of innocent people on the moon Euridice as a part of Weyland-Yutani’s plan to create a whole new species of alien creatures to use however they see fit. Unfortunately for the company, things don’t go as planned and the Xenomorphs that are brought to this world completely take it over, killing and impregnating any human who remains with only a handful of survivors able to board a ship and escape. While the settlement was once a perfect environment for the human race, it quickly becomes the Xenomophs’ ideal world given their ability to turn any environment into their perfect habitat.
This issue shows how perfectly and totally Xenomorphs are able to conquer any world and turn it into their own personal Garden of Eden. Fans have seen Xenomorph nests in the past, including when the creatures turn the human settlement of Hadley’s Hope into their terrifyingly familiar hive in the film Aliens, but now it is explicitly shown that they can turn a whole planet into one giant nest with the same aesthetics introduced in Alien and further explored in Aliens. While these creatures by themselves are incredibly deadly with its razor-sharp claws, spear-like tails, and vicious tongue-mouths, the Xenomorphs’ real threat is their ability, as a species, to infest and corrupt an entire world, effectively making it theirs forever.
This dark terraforming ability has been right under fans’ noses throughout the course of the Alien franchise. Most stories, especially in the comics, begin with humans stumbling upon a Xenomorph-infested world and then having to deal with the threat Xenomorphs pose as individually deadly creatures. However, the real threat has always come before a story like that begins as fans don’t normally get to see how the Xenomorphs have taken over that planet in question. This aspect to the alien species makes their presence in the universe that much more haunting as they seemingly just exist on these strange worlds that all look exactly the same, making the Xenomorphs seem like something of a universal plague. This issue shows the before stages of a planetary Xenomorph takeover and reveals that their most terrifying ability has nothing to do with killing, but everything to do with how Alien’s iconic creatures can turn any planet into a nightmarish hellscape perfectly suited for their species.
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